Pakistan's top judge disqualified the country's prime minister from office on Tuesday, in a move likened to a "judicial dictatorship" by some commentators outraged that the head of government should be deposed by anything other than parliament.

Luxury flats in London, hotels in Park Lane and gambling debts in Monte Carlo: rarely has corruption and influence-peddling in Pakistan been more embarrassingly laid bare than in the documents presented to the country's supreme court.